My hubby and I took a long time deciding the names of our sons. Since his name was often lengthened to end in “y” (like Tom becomes Tommy) and even now he’s in his 50s his sister refers to him by that diminutive, DH was adamant, we would never name either of them with a name that could be made “cute” like that. He wanted our eldest to be called Steven. Except I’d been bullied by a Steven when I was in grade school, so I wasn’t having any part of that. Finally we settled upon their names, only to discover once our eldest grew up that his co-workers call him by a shorter version of his name, and one I don’t like. (You can’t win.)

As an author, when I’m trying to choose a name for a character, I swear I take as long and put as much effort into deciding their names.

For me as a reader, just like when I was choosing our sons’ names, I associate character names with people I’ve met in real life—so certain fictional characters as lovable as the writer created them may have an automatic handicap in my mind because they remind me of a jerk I once dated, or a girl in high school who tormented me or a real dipwad I used to work with or…well, you get the idea. Actually I may use those names in my own books, but usually for characters I don’t like. 😉 None of my character will ever share a name with anyone in my family either because writing an erotic romance character with the same name as my sons? Ick.

I have a spreadsheet that lists the thousand top names (one for given names, and one for surnames) in the various decades according to the age of my character. You’d think I should be able to just close my eyes and point to a name, but nope. I look for very specific things, like does it sound like a name a cowboy born in 1980s Texas would have. For instance, I can’t see a cowboy hero being called Marian (with apologies to John Wayne, but he DID change his name after all.) Oh oh, have I created a challenge for myself? I also look at how the name goes with the surname. I don’t want to fall into Stan Lee’s habit of having alliterative names.

I also look at what the other characters’ names are — most readers get confused if you have too many characters whose names start with the same letter. For instance, the heroes’ mother is named Charlene, but is commonly referred to as Cissy. So readers might get confused if there were also characters named Chance or Chuck, even though they’re male, and I definitely couldn’t have one called Charley.

Then I have to look at the surnames. Which means I have to decide what the family’s ethnicity is.

And I go through this with every single character, no matter how big or small their role. Of course, sometimes names just come out of the blue. (Like one of my favorite heroes, Sam Watson from the Hauberk Protection series.) Unfortunately that doesn’t happen as often.

The hero in my upcoming release Slow Ride Home went through a variety of names. If you followed my blog you may remember he was originally called Tyler Montgomery. I’d polled my street team leaders and they’d come up with a list of their 20 favorite hero names and I chose that one because it sounded the most like a cowboy, and at the time I hadn’t seen many characters by that name. (Ha!) Then I turned in my manuscript and my editor said (I’m paraphrasing here because I’m too lazy to look up what she actually said, but the gist of it was…) “The last three books I’ve edited have hero named Tyler. Would you mind changing his name?”

Yikes.

Now once I’m at the stage where the book is done, that character is indelibly imprinted in my head as that name. To suddenly think of him as someone else is like renaming your baby when they’re five years old, so yes, my brain sort of exploded. Anyway, I begrudgingly (yes, I admit there was some pouting going on) changed his name to Ben. (Again after a lot of back-and-forth discussions between my beta readers and my resistant-to-change brain.) Of course, once I made the decision, I told my editor who said “you don’t have to change his name if you don’t want to. It was just a suggestion.” So I changed it back to Tyler. For about a week. At which point I met our own Cynthia d’Alba at the Romantic Times Conference in Kansas City. We sat down and chatted and I talked about my upcoming trilogy and the Montgomery family and discovered she had a book/series with a Montgomery family all her own. Now our books aren’t published with the same publisher, but to have two series out, with the books coming out at basically the same time, and with the same family name, might confuse readers. So I went back and put in a call to two of my beta readers and asked if they had any suggestions for new last names. We decided upon Grady because a) it’s easy to say, b) it’s short, so it’ll fit on swag easily, and c) it fit in with the family history I’d created for them, and best of all, d) I liked the sound of it. Since it’s my story, that one held the most sway. 😉

But then I went back and discovered another author had a well-known, beloved character named Ty Grady. I know, I didn’t have to change my guy’s name, but I’m a little possessive, and I wanted him to have his own name. So I decided to switch the hero’s first name back to Ben. And I must admit I’ve grown to like him with his new name.

What about you? Are there any names in books that have made you instantly dislike a character everyone likes? Any names you love and haven’t seen used for a hero?

Born in Montreal Canada and raised in Ontario, Leah Braemel loves writing about sexy heroes (and their heroines) as a way to avoid dealing with the dust bunnies prolifterating under her beds. The plot bunnies however are left free to attack. Which they often do.

13 Comments

Livia QuinnOct 30, 2013 @ 08:07:09

Ditto. X Ditto., Leah. I go through the same thing. As a matter of fact, I remember a few chats where we brainstormed my first characters, lol. I didn’t realize Ben went through so many name changes. I also can’t give up my Write It Now program because of the great name/character generator. It’s funny though how you can have a gigantic spreadsheet, programs, the web and still it takes forever to come up with exactly the right name. Oh and I think Sam came to you er, fully formed. He was the first, ya know…

Hi Livia! Yup, Sam walked into the room fully formed. 😉 The process for Ben was however much more complicated than usual, but it’s worked out.Leah Braemel recently posted..What’s in a name?

Lori MeehanOct 30, 2013 @ 08:16:15

Great post Leah. I can’t wait to read the new book.

Cynthia D'AlbaOct 30, 2013 @ 09:35:33

I know exactly what you mean about names. Mitch Landry (hero-Texas Two Step) started out as an Italian Prince complete with a well-thought out name, except…”he” hated it! 🙂 He refused to talk to me until I got his name right!

Right now, I’m working on Texas Twist. My heroine started out as Victoria, except she wouldn’t speak to me until I changed it. She’s now Paige and she’s happy with that!

Montgomery…is a long name I swear, the next family series I write I’ll go with a SHORT name. And Montgomery is so overused. A rookie mistake on my part.

LOL Cynthia — we must be on the same wavelength again. The heroine of book 2 of my Grady Legacy (which I’ve just learned comes out next May) is named Paige. (and thanks for the advice re long vs short names–definitely a handy tip to remember)Leah Braemel recently posted..What’s in a name?

Lori HOct 30, 2013 @ 10:27:42

Wow that was a lot of work for a name. I didn’t realize the amount of time that went into that. However in saying that I spent a lot of time naming my own children. In fact it was stressful at times 😉
There are several names I just don’t like and I guess it’s because they remind me of characters I’ve seen either in movies or books. I don’t know that I should list them as it may be someone’s name here.

Some of my characters are born with their names, and some, like yours take a lot of time and thought. It made me smile when you said you used certain names for characters you don’t like. Same here.Stephanie Berget recently posted..Night Owl Reviews Scavenger Hunt

I have a hard time with names too. I spent the most time naming the sisters in my Bancroft Brides series. The three sisters’ names had significance and pointed a bit toward their personalities or traits. Holly, born at Christmas; Paige, the sister who always did what was expected of her; and Zoe, the wild sister.
I admit, when I’m looking for names, I also keep in mind what is easy to type…can’t spent 300 pages twisting my fingers around the keyboard!
And you are right…no family names. I love the name Kyle…but have a BIL by that name. So…no hero’s by that name! Sigh.

Man, I have so many responses this comment will probably be longer than your whole post. LOL

Kids’ names will ALWAYS be shortened. We decided on Dakota pretty easily. My husband’s grandmother said “We can call her DD!” We stared at her for a few seconds and then I said, “YOU can call her DD, G-Nana. No one else will be allowed.” But she was so NOT a DD no one ever called her that. She is, however, Koti, and she and her sister get mad if we call her by her full name. Ditto her sister’s, but at least without the ie sound. 🙂

I don’t go to all the trouble you do for my character names, but I do have a type. LOL I like hard-sounding names, so K, T, M, and R dominate. I try to use names I don’t like for bit characters so I don’t waste a name I like. Sunroper, my book that comes out in December, is the third in a trilogy. My hero was originally Finn Samargo. I LOVE that name. But at one point, I realized there would be a Finn and a Quinn together in some scenes. Quinn is the heroine from book 1. She had a far smaller role in book 3 than book 2, but still. Too rhymey! Also, someone pointed out that Finn and Quinn were a couple in season 1 of Glee, so that put the total kibosh on it. He became Gage, but I don’t know if I ever got totally used to the change.

The characters in the first book have last names related to rifles. Remington, Caldwell, Jarrett. I don’t normally put that much thought into it, but I was a little crazy with that book. 🙂 The hero had a different first name when I first wrote it, but he became Nick in the second draft. Last month I was at a workshop with Roxanne St. Claire and discovered that one of her early books had a character with that name. I was so appalled! She’ll never read my book and never know it, but I had to go up and assure her anyway that I didn’t steal her name. LOLNatalie J. Damschroder recently posted..All Entangled Eve Blog Hop

I’ve heard about naming characters, especially alpha males with hard sounding names before. I think I pick them more subconsciously. There are certain names that sound heroic and others, not so much. LOL about Finn and Quinn. I realized (too late) in my Hauberk series that I have an Andy and a Sandy, but they didn’t really have any scenes together until Hidden Heat (which is book 4, but the characters were already named and I couldn’t do anything about it.)

I’m like you when naming bit characters and try to use names that I don’t see myself ever using for a hero or heroine.

There are certain characters’ names that just came to me, like Sam Watson, and Brett Anderson and Dillon Barnett — I have no idea where they came from but they walked into my head and introduced themselves fully named. LOVE when that happens. (But then I always worry that I’ve “pulled a Natalie” as I will now think of it, and used a name from someone else’s book. And I’m sure Roxanne didn’t mind–she’s a lovely lady.)Leah Braemel recently posted..What’s in a name?